Work

November 8, 2002 - 8:55am -- jim

Issue 5.1 of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor is now available
online at workplace

Sections include "Technology, Democracy, and Academic Labor" (edited by
Laura Bartlett and Marc Bousquet in collaboration with Richard Ohmann
and *Radical Teacher*), "Organizing the Family" (edited by Noreen
O'Connor), and "Activist Front" (with features by Bill Vaughn and
Nick Tingle).

October 26, 2002 - 4:10pm -- jim

"Suburbia or Global Communities?

And the Next Mutiny on the Bounty"

By P.M.

[A longer article, presented in three parts.]

"I was more worried about myself then than I was at any other time of my life... You’ve fallen into something that’s so ugly and horrible. Instead of My Drugs Hell, it’s My Suburban Hell.That’s not being flippant. One thing I really fear is living that whole kind of home/garden/kids kind of suburban existence. DIY and all that. I’d much rather be selling my arse in King’s Cross than living that kind of life. It’s sick and sordid that people have set such limitations on themselves, thinking that’s all they’ll get.“ (Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting, about his life after his drug-addiction)

"Paradise has been found.“ Bruce Steinberg, of Merrill Lynch, about the US. (Tages-Anzeiger 1-26-2002)

Suburban Utopia

At this moment everyone on the planet is watching the people of the USA and wondering how they are reacting to the present global crisis. For the most "dangerous" working class on this planet is the US working class. When its compliance with capital ends, US capital will collapse and thereafter, like dominoes, all the secondary capitals. Some of those lesser proletariates seem ready for such an eventuality, are even prepairing for the "day after“, expecting the big holiday. The Germans and the French are rehearsing work-free lifestyles for five to six weeks every summer, the Japanese have only been pretending to be part of the game for 100 years and seem to be about to quit now. The Italians, Spanish, Russians are ready to let go. The Chinese, the Indians and Argentinians are desperately looking for a way out. Many others never really tried.

But the US working class is not only potentially dangerous to world capital. If it keeps supporting it actively or passively, there can’t be an end to the world’s turmoil, destruction and misery. The key historic question of our age is therefore: why is the US working class not letting go? Why are they still putting up with capital’s arrogance and constant demands? What have they got to lose?

Try this: The US proletariate is living in a kind of continental "Truman Show“, in a consumers‘ paradise. They’re already living in near-paradise, in a state of bliss, in a virtual utopia, beyond, in non-capitalism, in suburbia. And they seem to love it. They’re disgustingly happy – or : they think they are. (Which is even worse.) As long as suburbia can exist or as long as there is at least a believable pretense or realistic hope for it to come true, there can be no change on this planet, just the defence of the status quo with all means. Nobody wants to lose paradise, especially not to crazy terrorists who are willing to die in order to get there.

October 24, 2002 - 2:07pm -- jim

The Antimilitarist Committee of the Anarchist Federation of Italy Umanita Nova writes:

We have decided to be at the demonstration against all wars that
will take place in Florence (Italy) next November 09, with our
banderoles, flags, press and leaflets.
We made this choice for the simple reason that since ever we are
contrary to any war.

We made this choice because it is needed that we are in huge
numbers to cry it out. But we decided as well that it must be
clearly outspoken, with the contents that are part of our history as
anarchists.

— It is required to be antimilitarists. It's no use saying "NO wars"
unless with as much strength we say: NO to the tools of wars -
fabrication and sale of arms, prisons, law courts, polices, armies,
sexism, racism? the militarizing of our consciences.
— It is required to be against states. The existence of a bound
territory to be defended from suspected invaders is in itself cause
of wars. Nobody should ever be our enemy only because he lives
somewhere away from us.

— It is required to be against capitalism. The exploitation of the
capitalist system is under the eyes of everyone of us. Be it in the
rich and wealthy West or in other places, with different means and
more or less intensity, capitalism exploits, reduces to starvation,
kills. War is the ruling method of this system. To think one can
stand against war without opposing the model that produces it is
like being maimed.

— It is required to be anticlerical. Churches, the clergy,
ecclesiastical hierarchies? since ever they are vehicle of lacerations
among peoples, each pretending the upper role for their own God
and their own way to salvation. They speak peace while they foster
hate towards those that do not conform to their moral and
moralistic precepts.

WAR NEEDS YOU

YOU DON'T NEED WAR

AGAINST ALL MILITARISM OR HIERARCHY:

OBJECT
AND DESERT

FOR AN IMMEDIATE GENERAL STRIKE IN CASE WAR
STARTS!

October 16, 2002 - 8:10pm -- hydrarchist

hydrarchist writes"This is an extract from a new work in german and english, produced by the Kolinko collective entitled 'hotlines - Call Centre | Inquiry | Communism".
The full text of the book is available at Nadir

Fiat-Call Centre in Milano/Italy

At the beginning everything looks really nice when you enter Fiat's call
centre in Milan. Lots of space, multi-coloured cubicle walls and little
flags, lots of young people sitting in front of large monitors, wandering
around or relaxing and smoking in the corner by the vending machines. They
speak all kinds of languages: Italian, French, German, Spanish, Dutch,
Polish... Something between an internet cafe, a children's day care centre
and one of those newsrooms in an American TV soap.
Work begins quite relaxed, too. You get a training course where you're told
that the call centre won a prize last year. That everyone is nice to each
other because that way work is fun. That we're supposed to smile all the
time - even on the phone - because then customers get a good impression and
keep buying those Fiats, Alfa Romeos and Lancias. Some weeks and many calls
later you realise where you've ended up. The surroundings have ceased to
cast a spell on you: Welcome to the world of call centres!

October 4, 2002 - 4:54am -- hydrarchist

Update

This story was originally marked up on October 4th. Below the article and call you can now find a report on the many actions which took place today as part of the protest. Further reports are available at the MWR site

McDonalds Workers Resistance: October 16

Hi,

I'm writing to give you more information about the day
of action on Ocotber 16th and to invite you to
participate.

McDonalds workers, across the UK, Continental Europe,
Russia, North America and Australasia, will take
direct action against our employers. There will be
different sorts of actions, reflecting the different
organisations and individuals participating- some
strikes, some sabotage, go slows, partial walk outs,
'phone in sick days', etc.

October 2, 2002 - 8:32am -- hydrarchist

This is a report from one of our members - Varg I Veum

Faceless Resistance -

Everyday resistance at a Swedish bakery

For almost two years I was employed at a bakery in southern Sweden, together with about 160 others; bakers, cleaners and mechanics included. From the first day of work, I was told that the bakery was under the threat to be closed down, and, indeed, with time, we got dismissed and the bakery shut down. Of course this affected the mood and ways of struggle at the bakery, and may be worth to keep in mind while reading the text. For example, it meant that the turnover of employees was rather big, and that many of the older people went looking for new jobs.

September 29, 2002 - 12:17pm -- hydrarchist

hydrarchist writes:

"The End of Work or the Renaissance of Slavery?

A Critique of Rifkin and Negri"

Constantine George Caffentzis

Introduction

The last few years in the U.S. has seen a return of a discussion of work that
is reminiscent of the mid-1970s, but with a number of twists. In the earlier period, books like Where Have All
the Robots Gone? (Sheppard 1972), False Promises (Aronowitz 1972)and Work in America (Special
Task Force 1973), and phrases like "blue collar blues," "zerowork" and "the refusal of
work" revealed a crisis of the assembly line worker which expressed itself most dramatically in wildcat strikes
in U.S. auto factories in 1973 and 1974 (Linebaugh and Ramirez 1992). These strikes were aimed at negating the
correlation between wages and productivity that had been the basis of the "deal" auto capital struck
with the auto unions in the 1940s. As Linebaugh and Ramirez wrote of the Dodge Truck plant wildcat involving 6000
workers in Warren, Michigan between June 10-14, 1974:

Demands were not formulated until the third day of
the strike. They asked for "everything." One worker said, "I just don't want to work." The
separation between income and productivity, enforced by the struggle, could not have been clearer (Linebaugh and
Ramirez 1992: 160).

September 26, 2002 - 2:20pm -- hydrarchist

hydrarchist writes:"

The following text was translated by Adriana Bove for the Generation Online Reading Group.

Labour and Language

Paolo Virno

'In the period of manufacture, and during the long apogee of Fordist
labour, labour activity is mute. Who labours keeps quiet. Production is a
silent chain, where only a mechanical and exterior relation between what
precedes it and what follows it is allowed, whilst any interactive
correlation between what is simultaneous to it is expunged. Living
labour, an appendix of the system of machines, follows a natural
causality in order to use its power: what Hegel called 'cunning' of
labouring. And 'cunning' is known to be taciturn. In the postfordist
metropolis, on the other hand, the material labouring process can be
empirically described as a complex of linguistic acts, a sequence of
assertions, a symbolic interaction. This is partly due to the fact that
now labour activity is performed aside the system of machines,
with regulating, surveillance and coordinating duties; but also because
the productive process uses knowledge, information, culture and social
relations as its 'primary matter'.

From an Egyptian Website dedicated to Arabic texts in the social sciences
from the (communist) libertarian view. Egyptians writers and researchers,
participating in the libertarian radical left wing.

The Reality of the Egyptian Proletariat

Translation from Arabic

In the modern capitalist society, there are two concepts of the labor class.
The former expands to include all that are deprived of any control over
financial resources. Such concept also includes those who own nothing but
their mental and physical fore, which they are obliged to sell for, wages in
return.

September 9, 2002 - 8:54pm -- hydrarchist

hydrarchist writes:"

Buenos Aires, August 25, 2002

National mobilization called for next September 10 in
support of the occupied plants and factories

With the presence of more than eight hundred delegates
representing factories, trade unions and popular
assemblies, the First National Conference of Plants
and Factories Occupied and In Struggle was held,
organized by the Bloque Piquetero Nacional (National
Picketeers’ Bloc) and the Movimiento Independiente de
Jubilados y Desocupados (Independent Movement of
Pensioners and Unemployed).